1. Field
The present application generally relates to dental planning, and more particularly to surface manipulation in dental prosthesis design.
2. Description of Related Technology
The use of computer systems to design dental prostheses has increased in recent years. The computer systems allow a dentist, dental technician, or other operator to design dental prostheses for individual patients. These individual prosthesis designs are often called “situations,” “dental plans,” or “prosthetic plans.” Operators using the computer systems can design plans based on a library of the teeth shapes and positions, patient data, and available equipment and hardware.
A problem with current systems is that they provide only limited ways to manipulate the surface of the dental prostheses that are being designed. These limited manipulations can make it difficult for an operator to add or subtract relatively uniform “layers” of material to/from the surface of a dental prosthesis that is being designed. Adding and subtracting uniform layers of material can be important when operators would like to thicken a portion of a crown or prosthesis for stability reasons and increase the thickness of a crown without significantly altering the contour, just to name a few examples. These problems and others are addressed by the techniques, systems, methods, devices, and computer-readable media described herein.